Pantéon: When the Saints Go Marching! Envisioning an Afro-diasporic Cosmology

Abstract

1. Loa, also spelled lwa, are the primary spirits of Haitian Vodou. They are akin to the orishas of Yoruba religion of West Africa and its New World derivatives, and of Afro-Caribbean syncretic belief systems or religions. Unlike the orishas, which are supernatural entities, the loa are not deities but spirits, either of human or divine origin, created by Bondye (God) to assist the living in their daily a airs. 2. All My Ancestors: The Spiritual in Afro-Latinx Art, exh. cat. (Philadelphia: Brandywine Workshop and Archives, 2022), 47. Pantéon: When the Saints Go Marching! explores the practice of using images evocative of Afro-diasporic and global belief systems as an act of resistance and resilience for African peoples of the New World. The full series depicts twenty-two icons, which conflate archetypes of African, Afro-Caribbean, and other deities with present-day pan-African heroes and sheroes like Bob Marley, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Harriet Tubman. I began the series during a residency at the Studio Museum in Harlem as I pondered what would happen if, years after their respective passing, the icons, as AfroCaribbean deities, landed in the modern-day city. I later revisited and expanded on the series, seeking to generate a conversation about how diasporic identities are constructed. As African American and Afro-diasporic heroes and sheroes are cast as icons, they become the archetypes of a New World. The video elements attached to each of the selected images reproduced here (by QR code) deconstruct each archetype and create universal connections, both visual and symbolic, drawing the viewer into a seductive, poetic world, a universal dance that goes beyond borders, geography, and language. It is the cosmic dance of creation, the dance of the atoms, a dance that pays homage to deities identified with the world’s belief systems, such as Shiva, one of the main deities of Hinduism, and Olodumare, the Yoruba supreme being, creator of the heaven and the earth. In the exhibition catalog accompanying All My Ancestors: The Spiritual in Afro-Latinx Art, Tatiana Reinoza, the show’s curator, referenced my practice and the Pantéon: When the Saints Go Marching! series in the following terms: